Wellesley Maple Leaf Newspaper

The Wellesley Township Heritage and Historical Society has completed a project to digitize the only surviving issues of the Wellesley newspaper, the Wellesley Maple Leaf. The paper was published from 1900 to 1927, but only issues from 1900 to 1908 have been preserved - only nine years, but almost 400 issues to read and enjoy!

Each issue is a searchable PDF file. ﻿This will be a big help to researchers but please remember that OCR (optical character recognition) software is not perfect, especially with older documents.

Local news was provided by correspondents in villages in and around the township including Wellesley village, Crosshill, Bamberg, Doering’s Corners, Huber's Corner, St. Clements, Linwood, Amulree, Philipsburg, Lisbon, Josephsburg, Nithburg, Hawkesville, Hampstead, Gadshill, New Prussia, Ratzburg, Rostock, Topping and more. Even Wellesley’s Third Line and Ninth Line had their own “reporters.” Ads for local businesses reveal the wide range of goods and services available.

Many thanks to theWaterloo Historical Society for allowing us to digitize their microfilm copy of the newspapers and theGrace Schmidt Room of Local History at the Kitchener Public Library for giving us exclusive access to their digital microfilm reader during this project. To view the newspaper, please click on the years below.